News October 2017

Fukushima City is 50 miles northeast of the Fukushima-Daiichi Power Plant, so the radiation levels have been lower there than in the restricted areas, now reopening, that are closer to the plant. Hayama was unable to test monkeys in the most-contaminated areas, but even 50 miles from the plant, he has documented effects in monkeys that are associated with radiation. He compared his findings to monkeys in the same area before 2011 and to a control population of monkeys in Shimokita Peninsula, 500 miles to the north. Hayama’s findings have been published in the peer-reviewed journal Scientific Reports, published by Nature. Among his findings: Smaller Bodies — Japanese monkeys born in the path of fallout from the Fukushima meltdown weigh less for their height than monkeys born in the same area before the March, 2011 disaster, Hayama said. “We can see that the monkeys born from mothers who were exposed are showing low body weight in relation to their height, so they are smaller,” he said. Smaller Heads And Brains — The exposed monkeys have smaller bodies overall, and their heads and brains are smaller still. “We know from the example of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that embryos and fetuses exposed in utero resulted in low birth weight and also in microcephaly, where the brain failed to develop adequately and head size was small, so we are trying to confirm whether this also is happening with the monkeys in Fukushima,” Hayama said. Anemia — The monkeys show a reduction in all blood components: red blood cells, white blood cells, hemoglobin, and the cells in bone marrow that produce blood components.

Shaun Burnie: The global nuclear industry developed over the past fifty years dependent upon vast quantities of steel components supplied by a relatively small number of specialized manufacturers. One of them is Kobe Steel Ltd. The steelmaker, a pillar of corporate Japan, is embroiled in the early days of disclosure of falsification of steel manufacturing data that extends to products used in planes and trains, to motor vehicles and spacecraft. And nuclear power plants. Kobe Steel and its broad collection of subsidiaries have supplied products to the nuclear industry both in Japan and around the world since the 1960’s. It’s a fair bet that every one of the 60 nuclear reactors operated in Japan since 1966 had some component supplied by Kobe Steel.

French nuclear regulator ASN has ordered utility EDF to urgently make the steel “anchors” for the emergency diesel generators at its Bugey and Fessenheim nuclear plants more earthquake resistant. The back-up generators, of which there are two per reactor, provide auxiliary power for reactor safety systems, including cooling the spent-fuel pool in the event of grid failure. The generators sit on steel anchors that have be able to withstand an earthquake.

Saudi Arabia plans to extract uranium domestically as part of its nuclear power programme and sees this as a step towards “self-sufficiency” in producing atomic fuel, a senior official said on Monday. Extracting its own uranium also makes sense from an economic point of view, said Hashim bin Abdullah Yamani, head of the Saudi government agency tasked with the nuclear plans, the King Abdullah City for Atomic and Renewable Energy (KACARE). In a speech at an international nuclear power conference in Abu Dhabi, he did not specify whether Saudi Arabia seeks to also enrich and reprocess uranium – steps in the fuel cycle which are especially sensitive as they can open up the possibility of military uses of the material.

Iran is to ‘start building two new nuclear plants with Russia tomorrow’, the country has suddenly revealed today. The country’s Head of Atomic Energy Organization made the shock revelation to stunned reporters at an airport today.

The world’s first floating offshore wind farm started delivering electricity to the grid in the north of Scotland. The Hywind project, built by Norwegian oil company Statoil ASA and Masdar Abu Dhabi Future Energy Co., has five turbines floating 25 kilometers (16 miles) off the coast of Peterhead, near Aberdeen. The project has a capacity of 30 megawatts and cost about 200 million pounds ($263 million) to construct. Floating turbines are expected to open the industry up to new markets like Japan, the U.S. west coast and Mediterranean, where seabeds drop off steeply from the coast.

New research has found that British businesses could be risking 17% of their annual revenue by failing to adopt an energy resilience strategy. This equates to £2.8m each year in damages and lost opportunity for the typical British medium-sized business, according to findings from Centrica Business Solutions. The Resilience study is based on a survey of more than 300 businesses across the UK and Ireland which delivers insight into the state of energy resilience. While 88% of respondents said that it was important for their business to be energy resilient, and 52% predicted they will experience energy-related failure in the next year, less than one-fifth (18%) said they have a formal energy resilience strategy in place.

Now that the clocks have gone back, you’ve probably noticed the street lights coming on earlier. They help us stay safe at night, but have you ever wondered how much energy they use? The bulbs that have been switched to super-efficient LED lights use a lot less energy than the old ones. But only around 20% of all our street lights are LED. If all UK street lights were changed, we could save a lot of CO2 every year – the equivalent of taking 400,000 cars off the road!

Concentrations of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere surged to a record high in 2016, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Last year’s increase was 50% higher than the average of the past 10 years. Researchers say a combination of human activities and the El Nino weather phenomenon drove CO2 to a level not seen in 800,000 years. Scientists say this risks making global temperature targets largely unattainable.

More than a billion people could be forced to flee their homes because of global warming, according to new research. The movement of people, as well as the various effects of climate change, could be about to trigger a major health crisis, according to a new study from The Lancet. Global warming is already leading some to conclude the climate-change migrants are being forced to move because of extreme changes in the amount of rain and temperature changes destroying their ability to farm. It notes that some have blamed the Syrian conflict on migration into the cities that was caused by a drought that seems to have been induced by climate change. It notes that “migration driven by climate change has potentially severe impacts on mental and physical health, both directly and through the disruption of essential health and social services”. That is the conclusion of the sweeping new research, which brings together a range of different studies looking at the health impacts of climate change. It suggests that the possible impact of those changes on people’s health could be vast – and that governments must act quickly to clean up the air and address environmental problems before they begin to kill people.

EDF aims to produce the first power from a new nuclear plant in Suffolk by 2031, the company’s departing UK chief executive has said. Vincent de Rivaz forecast that by 2033 the Sizewell C plant, a sister project to Hinkley Point C in Somerset, “will have been in operation for a couple of years”. Hinkley Point C, Britain’s first new nuclear plant in a generation, is due to start producing electricity by the end of 2025, although EDF has warned that the £20 billion project could be delayed until early 2027. When in 2008 EDF first started planning a series of new nuclear reactors, it was aiming for Hinkley Point to produce its first power by 2017 and Sizewell by 2021. In recent years the company has refused to disclose a target date for Sizewell, having been scarred by the experience of repeatedly having to delay its ta rget for Hinkley Point. However, in a leaving speech, Mr de Rivaz, who steps down this week, set out his “thoughts, hopes and expectations” for EDF Energy 16 years from now. EDF has carried out two stages of public consultation in Suffolk over the Sizewell project. A spokesman said that it would look at the feedback it had received and would revise plans for further public consultation before submitting a planning application.

Clients have included Greenpeace, Nuclear Free Local Authorities, WWF Scotland and the UK Government’s Committee on Radioactive Waste Management.

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